


toss the little mermaid back out to sea,

by Ariasune



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alien Biology, Dream Sequence, M/M, Symbolism, songfic actually haha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:27:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariasune/pseuds/Ariasune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surprisingly, Angels can dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	toss the little mermaid back out to sea,

Another boy kissed me today

I laughed in his mouth  

It’s not funny that I’m not kissing you  

I’m not laughing because we fell through

  

The little mermaid got the shittiest bargain in a whole house of shitty bargains, as far as Balthazar was concerned. It was crude - absolutely - but it was true, that was if you knew the gist of the story. None of that Part of Your World bullshit, not for Balthazar - he sank Celine Dion’s career, after-all.

So skip the cute interspecies romance, and that ridiculous dog, and get right down to the roots of the matter and pull them out bit by bit: 

  * unrequited love at its finest,
  * the bloodiest sort of sacrifice, 
  * and this overarching moral about earning a right to Heaven. 



It’s really not a pretty bargain - give up your tail, cleft your palette, all for some pretty mortal who gets a shot at heaven just for being made of mud. So, bleeding and aching heart to sternum, what does he do? Marries someone else, cracks your chest nice and open, leaving to turn to foam because god - you’re an idiot and love them. 

You don’t get to live, you don’t get to love, you don’t even get to bleed; all you get to do is dissolve.

But there is a consolation prize - if you work hard, and stick your nose to the grind, you too can have a soul.

What’s so good about souls anyway - Balthazar has had his grace all over them, and he didn’t get the big deal. Powerful, sure, pretty enough, but covered in mud and viscera and this primordial, impractical…this completely impractical, downright placental physicality.

 

It’s the stories they told us

when we were younger about life and love

 

Surprisingly, angels can dream. They may not sleep within any human sense of the word, but dolphins tend to relate, because like dolphins, only parts of an angel sleep.

There are so many layers of consciousness to an angel, scattered across dimensions and planes that intersect and divide, so it’s a relatively simple for some of these layers of thought and memory to sleep. Other than the minor difference that much of Balthazar is awake - he is dreaming no differently than humans, (or dolphins for that matter) do; in strange flurries of memories, and thought, entwined and rewritten through motifs and stories and nonsense.

Lately, he has been dreaming about the ocean. At first it had been thick and engulfing and airless - pressing down on him like a guillotine. Dark, and filled with angler fish bright monsters. It had smelt like salt and the faint electricity of heaven, so he assumes he is still processing his defection, but then, it had tasted like fire and brimstone and hell as well.

Now though, it’s thin, and clear, like the gorgeous coast off the carribean (that he actually quite likes) - but it doesn’t smell like salt or taste like fire - it smells like nothing. The water is bright, and he rolls in it - flickering between his vessel, and his unfurled wavelength - and it feels like flight. Like time and space running along his wings, as he stretches them in the water, and if not for his own movements, he would not be sure where he ended and the sea began.

He likes the new dreams; likes them because they represent how much he hates hail, and how much he loves the beegees, and how much he loathes thunderstorms, but how much he loves petra in the rain. How much he loves how lonely he is - because he hasn’t tuned into his brothers and sisters in ages - because angels are not built to be alone, but here he is, alone.

 

How our happiness lies in the hands of another

Who’d fly in on the wings of a dove

Well that’s the way the fairy tale goes 

Boy meets girl and they wed with roses 

But that’s not the way it seems to be 

And I’m pissed that they lied to me 

Since [you] met [me] and [I] ran away 

And [I] met [you] and [I’m] afraid to stay

 

Thankfully, only three layers of Balthazar are asleep when Castiel turns up in one of Balthazar’s many foxholes. Raphael is hot on his heels, and he can’t afford to be only mostly awake. He needs to be practically alert, and his concern leaks into the dreams:

The crystal water deepens around him, and he arches all of his wings to fight from sinking. Dully, he is aware this is a nightmare, and he has not had nightmares of drowning since they laid siege to hell. Even then, he drowned in fire and ice, not water.

As he arches his wings, they are fingers, merely hands, scrambling and scratching at the water, as it darkens from bright electric blue to a dull inky  one. He can’t breathe - he’s too human, too tightly engulfed by his vessel - and he chokes in the water as an anglerfish casts towards him. 

It lights up along the hull of it’s spine, teeth rattling in the water - and it’s bright - impossibly bright - and it’s probably meant to be Raphael because its crackling like electricity. 

Of course, Balthazar reflects more consciously, he has no reason to be concerned, as he points Lot’s Salt at Raphael fearlessly.

The anglerfish reeks of salt, hissing and twisting as another angel unfurls dark, burnished - soaked wings - and traps the gleaming beast in its limbs. Curls a long wavelength around the predator and squeezes until it bursts into sharp bubbles. Balthazar can breathe, and opens his wings up - is cast upwards by the water.

"Thank you," Balthazar tells Dream-Castiel, as Balthazar is released from the holy fire.

But Dream-Castiel’s wings melt away, drift off in the water like flaking scales, and the vessel is staring back at Balthazar. Quirks a smile, and opens its mouth to rows and rows and rows and rows of heaven-bright teeth-

All three of Balthazar’s resting layers wake up with a jolt.

 

End up home alone watching recorded tv 

(Not living ever after happily) 

 

This time, Balthazar’s dreams are most of his layers, because he really doesn’t feel the need to invest all of his attention into licking wine from some dark-haired boy’s mouth. He would estimate almost two-thirds of himself are instead flickering in the water, with nine sets of irridescent wings and a leviathan tail streaking behind him. He arcs for the surface, and performs - shows off - all the wings and the long, feathered tail with a leap.

Dream-Castiel has been dancing in the air - focused, as though fighting something Balthazar can’t see, but when Balthazar cracks the surface of the water, he is filled with dread down to his bones.

But already, he is back in the water and it is open wide and quiet - he has been trying to coax Castiel into the water, but Castiel only skims it for a moment. Balthazar shifts in the water - only two wings, but long, long spines and scales and long tentacles that curl and bunch in the water - watches Castiel fall to the water, too human, and too heavy for his wings.

Balthazar swims over, lazy and more than a little human now himself - he has hands, but he thinks the tentacles he imagines himself having are more useful - and rights Castiel in the water. He is all wings, scales, and has fins to swim with.

"There, my dear," Balthazar is pleased, "That’s better isn’t it?"

Castiel wings frown at him, and he raises them upwards to point out a soul glittering above the water. Balthazar wrinkles his nose, and bares his teeth, but reaches out to grasp the soul anyway-

and it burns like hell, burns and burns and burns at him - Balthazar quickly wheels deeper underwater, towards the dark and the anglerfish with a snap and a snarl. He is all wings and serpentine shapes again, covered in murky, colour-changing scales.

Castiel however is circling round the soul - frolicking, Balthazar decides. But with each revolution around the soul, his vessel shows through, bright gold and white feathers melting into the water like blood. By the time Castiel actually touches the soul, the only thing left of him that isn’t human are rows and rows of teeth that he smiles towards Balthazar.

"Don’t give it your voice," Balthazar insists - he’ll analyze what that means later, but Castiel just glances mutely at Balthazar and ignores him.

 

You’re right - I am prince charming

Onto the next princess when I’m bored with the last 

He’s the hero of every story - got his chapter in every girl’s book 

Walk away with all the honor and glory (But I wonder what else you took?)

 

Castiel is human in Balthazar’s dreams now, and Raphael is wrapped around Balthazar, pinning his wings in to his sides, and this time Castiel is not going to come and help him, because Castiel can’t breathe in water like angels should.

"Give me your voice," Raphael tells Balthazar - and he sounds like Castiel, but Balthazar knows it’s Raphael, "You don’t need to speak out," And each row of bright lights and teeth click and snap at Balthazar. "Your voice, your voice, your voice," The clacks chant at him. "It’s better than drowning," Castiel tells him.

Balthazar sheds his wings, throws his halo, his coronae to Raphael with a resentful and guttural silence. He feels his back give out, his tail melt, his fins fracture as he bends into a new and human shape. As he sings his grace out into Raphael’s greedy mouth, a soul flutters and pins along his rib cage. 

It is possibly the most disgusting nightmare Balthazar has had occasion to have, and he can’t seem to wake any of his sleeping parts, so he cordons the dream away from him, except now it’s no longer dark. It’s full of light, and Castiel combing the streaks of ash from Balthazar’s face, kissing the soul out from between Balthazar’s teeth, brushing the last of Balthazar’s wings away.

"I’m officially - on your team, you bastards," Balthazar decides.

 

Goodbye, prince charming 

And drown sleeping beauty 

Shove Cinderella’s slipper where the sun don’t shine 

Toss the little mermaid back out to sea

 

He’s vaguely familiar with this story - it’s the Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson - and worse, he’s familiar with the ending. He’s not entirely sure why his sublayers have decided to rework the story for their own purposes, but he has a good idea, and he doesn’t much care to dwell on it.

More and more of him is asleep these days; even though he misses how they were before. All clear water, easy company. Castiel with wings and grace and Balthazar with wings and grace. Now Balthazar is graceless, even clumsy, staggering around drunk in an labyrinthian palace after Castiel.

Castiel who looks like grace - he has wings, and endless eyes of light - except he’s choked with soul and soul and soul - Balthazar’s dreamt-soul as well - between rows of teeth. Too many teeth, too sharp. But Balthazar doesn’t care, because Castiel is wrapped around the soul that Castiel sold his voice for. Who stole Castiel from him, and left Balthazar bleeding out where his wings once stood.

And Castiel is burning up like fire and lightning, from the souls he feasts on, but no matter how Balthazar tries he cannot coax Castiel back to the cool water, because Castiel is tangled up in that muddy human soul.

 

Starting today

We’ll tell the story my way, 

Where the King of Imperfection 

Takes back the Prince of Mistakes

 

Balthazar pulls as hard he can at Castiel - weak and human - but Castiel simply grins the long rows of teeth at him. Balthazar hasn’t a hope of moving Castiel, who is grace and fire and souls.

He can feel himself dissolving, bleeding dark and wet onto the floor. He is water to wine to blood - his wings are long gone - there is a wound in his back, angry and thorough, and his grace pours - soaks from it as he turns to foam and dust,

"Cas," He manages.


End file.
